


And Miles To Go

by Mad_Maudlin



Series: Once and Future [2]
Category: Merlin (BBC), Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Immortality, tree house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-18
Updated: 2010-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:43:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Far above the forest floor, Helen Magnus meets a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Miles To Go

She fell in the river. Ridiculous, of course, especially after she'd taken such precautions against all the deadly powers of the Abnormals they were hunting. She had been talking to Sam, saying something inane like "The antivenoms must be kept cool," when the ground seemed to dissolve beneath her feet; one moment it was the spongy topsoil of the Amazon, and the next air, and the next rushing water the temperature of blood. It closed over her head, and all after was darkness.

Or not all: she remembered voices, movement, words in English and words in a tongue she did not know. She remembered gentle swaying, as if she were being carried, except the journey never seemed to end. She thought she remembered hands, long and thin, on her face and body, and for a little while she even thought she knew whose they were.

But John was not in the Amazon, or anywhere else she could go. And Helen was no longer traveling. When she came back to herself, really came back, she recognized the steady back-and-forth as the motion of a tropical breeze: she was in a hammock, and the wind rocked her gently. The hammock was made of coarse ropes, but with a blanket laid over the top of it to shield her skin; another thin blanket preserved her modesty. At first she wasn't certain what to make of the shelter she was in, which had some walls of cloth and some of wood, until she realized some of the walls weren't walls at all: it was built hard against the stem of a tree, with branches serving as both floorboards and the beams of the roof.

Helen looked to her right and saw this: the Amazon veiled by rain, its green canopy spreading endlessly beyond, the ground hundreds of feet down. A missing wall, framed by sheets of coarse cloth, cut across by only a ladder. Some small monkey sat on that ladder, and a white man in Western clothes sat with one leg dangling off the edge of the platform, throwing the monkey seeds.

She tried to sit up, but the movement made her head swim and drew the attention of the man. "You're awake," he said in English, "excellent. I was getting worried."

"Where am I?" Helen asked, and made another attempt to sit up. It was no small feat in the hammock, and she nearly forgot to catch the blanket that covered her.

The man averted his eyes anyway. "You're in a village about ten miles from where you washed up on the riverbanks—you'll have to tell me how far that is from your camp. A hunting party from another village found you and brought you to me, apparently on the grounds that since we're both white we must certainly know one another."

"I've heard less sound logic in my life," Helen said. "What manner of village is this?"

The man shrugged his bony shoulders. "They call themselves the Yanomami. Some of their kin live on the ground, but this particular...I suppose you'd call them a clan...they prefer the trees. Safer from a lot of things up here."

Helen managed to get out of the hammock, despite her dizziness; concussion symptoms, she decided, and far from the worst she'd ever had. She wrapped the blanket securely around her torso. "And what manner of man are you, Doctor?"

He turned to look at her and smiled slightly, enigmatically. Now that she could see him properly, she couldn't be certain of his age: he had high, stark cheekbones and a long jaw, with gawky large ears and slightly knowing eyes. He reminded her slightly of James. "What makes you think I'm a doctor?" he asked coyly.

"If these Yanomami are anything like the ones I've read of, they don't have the medical knowledge to treat an infected pimple, much less a near-drowning," she said. "Yet here I stand, with my cuts and bruises tended to and my lungs clear of water. And you are sitting by my bedside, awaiting my recovery."

The man laughed. "All right, you win. I'm not technically a medical doctor, but I've had training, and some if it was even recent. I worked a while at Royal Albion in London, during the war."

"Are you an Englishman, then?" Helen asked, because his accent seemed impossible to define—a bit Welsh, a bit Jordie, a bit of something else entirely.

For some reason the question made him laugh harder; the monkey, perhaps impatient to continue the game, ran up and began to tug on his hand. "Oh, I suppose I'm close enough," he said eventually, and let the monkey have whatever fruit he'd been picking at. "What about you, madame?"

"I am English, in spite of everything," Helen said, and decided she'd had enough of being uneasy. She extended her hand. "Dr. Helen Magnus."

The man took it; his fingers were a bit sticky from the fruit. "Call me Emrys, Dr. Magnus. Is that medical doctor, or something else?"

"Both," she said. "I'm in the Amazon conducting a field survey of some of its more unusual flora and fauna."

"You mean the orange frogs that make you vomit and see angels?" Emrys asked, looking all innocent.

"Something like that," Helen said. "What about you?"

Emrys looked over the canopy again, and laced his knobby fingers over one sharp knee. "I suppose you could say I'm on holiday."

"Holiday?" Helen echoed. "In the deepest regions of the Amazon?"

"To each their own," Emrys said lightly, and stood. "Maybe I should let you get dressed before we take this any further."

"I would appreciate that," Helen admitted, and so Emrys simply climbed down the ladder to the next level of the tree house; there was no way she could see to close the side of the compartment that was open to the sky. In fact, when she looked carefully she could see other tree houses, with rooms just as exposed, not far from this one, and for a moment she did feel awkward and particularly naked. Then she realized that any people accustomed to living with so little privacy would be equally accustomed to casual nudity, and that she had little to fear in the way of prurient observation. She dropped the blanket and dressed quickly, with her back to the open air.

In the compartment below, Emrys crouched on the floor talking to one of the villagers—a tiny man, even compared to Helen, who wore only a loincloth and stark white body paint. Emrys seemed to have a good command of the language, but not a perfect one, as the Yanomami man made several sharp gestures and once even smacked him lightly on the side of the head—a gesture Emrys easily laughed off. After their conversation, the Yanomami man went into an adjacent compartment and Emrys stood up, stretching. His head nearly brushed the ceiling. "He was just telling me that other white men are coming down the river. Sounds like they're looking for you."

"That would be Samuel Foss, my research assistant," Helen said, and frowned. "He was supposed to go back to our base camp and alert Barney in the event of an emergency."

"He might have done," Emrys said. "You were unconscious for quiet a while."

Helen touched the back of her head, where she could just feel a tender spot, barely a goose egg. "If that's right, Mr. Emrys, then you are more magician than physician."

Emrys bowed. "At your service, Doctor. Though I'm afraid the rest of your things didn't fare as well as your clothes."

She ignored the change of subject briefly as Emrys presented her with the ruin of her backpack—water-logged, unable to dry in the heavy air, it was already moldering, and her paper journals were a rotting ruin. She pushed it all aside as a loss. "I suppose I have your magic to thank that my clothes survived?" she asked.

"One part magic and one part synthetic fibers," Emrys said straight-faced. "Even magic can't make plastic edible, as far as I know, though I admit I haven't worked very hard on it."

Helen shook her head. "I've seen many unusual things in my life, Mr. Emrys, but all of them have been explicable by science. Magic is simply science that hasn't been properly understood."

"Then call it faith," Emrys suggested.

"Faith in what?" Helen asked.

"In older gods." Emrys sat again, dangling his legs off the edge of the tree house. "Not the one who plays dice with the universe or lets it tick away like a blind man's watch. The gods who touched the world and the people in it, once. Maybe sometimes they still do."

Helen sat next to him, gingerly. "You're talking about paganism."

"Call it whatever you like," Emrys said. "Either way, iIt's how I knew you weren't meant to die in the jungle, not today and not for a long time yet."

Emrys looked directly at her, and something in his eyes pierced her to her core. "What makes you think I'll live so long?" she asked warily.

"You're already older than you look, aren't you?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"I'm one hundred and three," Helen said, just to gauge his reaction.

Emrys nodded. "I'm fourteen hundred and ninety, myself. That is, on my next birthday."

He was quite earnest, and Helen decided after a moment that he wasn't exactly lying, either. His face had a timeless quality, but it was at least as youthful as her own, with black hair and only faint lines around his eyes and mouth. He could be any age at all, even the one he claimed. "Is your religion to thank for your longevity, too?" she asked.

"In a way," he said. "I'm waiting for something. Someone. And I don't suppose I get to go until I find him." He glanced at her sideways, smiling a little. "Do you believe me?"

"I'm certainly willing to believe that you possess powers," Helen said. "But I must say I remain more skeptical on other fronts."

Emrys chuckled and kicked his feet in the air. "In this case, I'll settle for skepticism."

They sat in silence for a while; the rain began slow. Another Yanomami man came into the tree house and spoke to Emrys without even looking Helen's way; Emrys answered but didn't translate for her. She thought for a while about the forest floor, Sam and the rest of her people creeping along the river in search of her, the Abnormals she'd come in search of; and in the trees, the Yanomami, living as perhaps they had for thousands for years, but with no written history to prove it. Emrys claimed he was fifteen hundred years old. Helen did not know how long she might live, how much she might age, whether she might carry on forever absent injury or disease. Her future seemed like the ground, vast but far away.

"You said you were here on holiday," she prompted, eventually.

"Of a sort," Emrys agreed.

"Why here, of all places?"

He pulled his long legs up to his chest, folding himself up like origami. It was another gesture that reminded her of John, though Emrys was not nearly so tall. "I was looking for someone, actually. A bit foolish of me, but the last time I was here--"

He stopped short. "The last time?" Helen asked.

"Back in the 1750s," he said, and gave her another of those glances that dared her to challenge him. She did not. "I found my way here by accident, rather like yourself, and met someone—well, rather like yourself in some ways. He was over a hundred years old and from a very long way away."

"Surely he wasn't a scientist," Helen said.

"Oh, nothing of the sort," Emrys said, with a crooked smile. "Sani was a—well, I suppose you could call him a magician. A shaman, of a kind. He had followed a spirit here from some desert up in Mexico as a young man and never made it home again."

"From Mexico?" Helen asked. "On foot?"

"I made it all the way to Transoxiana on a camel once," Merlin said. "I met a man who swears he walked from Jerusalem to Rome."

"Why on Earth would he walk all the way to the Amazon?" Helen asked.

"Spirits. Gods. You might as well call it destiny," Merlin said. "He came here, lived with the Yanomami for almost a hundred years—he told me how the tree houses made him think of the, oh, what are they called, the clay houses in the hillsides?"

"Pueblos," Helen said. "Though I think those have smaller windows."

Emrys laughed, but then fell silent; it was as if a shadow had passed over his face, and for a moment he seemed consumed by weariness beyond words. "I asked him," he said, "I asked if he'd like to go home again. He was far too old to walk back, of course, but I could've brought him to Berbice, and sailed as far as Los Cruces, or maybe New Orleans...it would've been mere weeks on horseback after that. I asked if the gods hadn't meant for him to come home one day. He said, 'Maybe they did, but they waited too long, and now my feet hurt.'"

Helen found herself taking Emrys's hand. "How are your feet, Mr. Emrys?" she asked.

He smiled again, rueful and wry. "I really thought I would find him during the war," he said quietly. "The one I'm waiting for, I mean. But after fourteen hundred years, you'd think I'd be used to false positives, too."

"I think everyone's entitled to a holiday," Helen said.

The rain had stopped; the sun began to emerge in spears and sparkles. Emrys raised his face to the light, but his voice was still heavy. "The world keeps getting bigger," he said, and he sounded every bit as old as he claimed. "At first I had only Albion to search, and then all the British Isles, and then a whole empire; now I'm not so sure I won't have to search a planet for him."

Helen thought of the Sanctuary, all the Sanctuaries she had fostered from a loose collection of her father's contacts into a global network of allies. "I suppose I'm lucky to have friends to share the burden of my work."

"Friends," Emrys said, and sighed. "Sani was my friend. Arthur was...so much more than a friend. I've buried enough friends to cover the Earth in their graves, and yet here I am."

"Here we are," Helen said softly, and despite the sunlight she felt sick at heart.

Emrys shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm depressing you. Old men's minds do wander."

"I was a child with a man named Robert Foss," Helen said, though she wasn't sure why. "Samuel is his great-grandson."

"So you empathize," Emrys said.

She was still holding his hand; she squeezed it. "In part."

Emrys suddenly climbed to his feet and pulled Helen after him. "Come here. Come with me."

He lead her through the tree houses of the Yanomami, past children at play and bare-chested women cooking some kind of soup of plantains, past old people sleeping and laughing young men, none of whom seemed to care much about the strangers in their midst. They crossed a bridge of ropes and twigs that speared the air, Emrys charging across fearlessly, Helen testing her footing—then around and around another house, through passages and up ladders, to an empty corner that lay in shadow. Emrys opened up a massive basket and pulled out a medium-sized clay pot with geometric markings. Something about it looked unexpectedly alien: the redness of the clay, perhaps, or the patterns that were so unlike what the Yanomami put on their blankets and their bodies. The top had been sealed in place with some sort of resin.

"Dr. Magnus," Emrys said, "this is Sani."

She knelt next to him and touched the pot. "Did he bring this all the way from his pueblo?"

Emrys nodded. "I asked the elders of the village. When he died they tried to follow his customs—they cleaned his bones and sealed them in here. Dust to dust."

She wondered if she would ever return to the dust from which she'd been made. "What do you mean to do with it?"

He looked faintly pained. "I should take it back to Tehuatonichen. That's where he came from. I should bring him home."

Helen reached out to touch the jar; it felt cooler than it should, and the clay was rough on her fingers. "But your feet hurt."

"I meant to take him with me when I left here," Emrys said. "I never stay in one place long, not even for holidays. But you'll be leaving well before me, and after three hundred years I think he deserves a faster trip home."

Emrys rested his hand over Helen's on the jar, catching hers between coolness and warmth, and for a moment it seemed that his eyes sparkled amber-gold in the shade. "I think," he added, "that this is destiny."

"How am I to find this Tehuatonichen?" Helen asked, swallowing against the sudden dryness in her mouth. "I hardly have gods to guide me."

Emrys rummaged in the basket and drew out something else—a piece of irregular leather, stretched thin and cracked with time. There were markings on it, faded almost beyond legibility; but this time Emrys' eyes did glow, and with a pass of his hand he made them as stark black as night. "He brought this map with him, once. It may not be much use anymore, but it's better than nothing."

Helen took it, and carefully felt the lines, but they weren't made with any normal ink and were in no danger of flaking. She would analyze it later; when she wasn't alone and concussed she would analyze everything. For now she rolled the map and put it in her pocket. "I fear you are sending me on a fool's errand, Mr. Emrys."

"Have a little faith, Dr. Magnus," Emrys said. "Even if it's not in the gods."

One of the villagers found them there, and scolded Emrys harshly; they were lead to the forest floor, where several young Yanomami men waited for them. Someone offered Helen a bag of woven leaves for Sani's bones. One of the young men, who was possibly named Changi, spoke a little Portuguese, and he conveyed that he'd met Sam and the others from the Rio Sanctuary further up the river and would take Helen to them, rather than risk any more outsiders discovering the village. He said this with one eye on Emrys like he suspected the magician would start bringing guided tours through at any moment.

"Thank you for your help, Mr. Emrys," Helen said, shouldering the bag with the urn. "I hope we meet again."

"I have a feeling we will," Emrys said. "At the very least, I'll look you up the next time I pass through London."

"Look for Dr. James Watson instead," she suggested. "He's my associate and handles all my affairs in that city. He can refer you to me."

"Consider it done." They shook hands. "And thank you again for helping me, and helping Sani."

"It's hardly any trouble," Helen said. "And if there's anything else I can do..."

Emrys smiled. "Just keep an eye out for any extraordinary young men named Arthur who seem like they might one day save the world."

"Must it be Arthur, or will any king of England do?" she asked.

"Just Arthur," Emrys said firmly. "It's only ever been Arthur."

Helen blinked, and a great many things suddenly fell into place. "Surely you're joking."

Emrys gave her another dry smiled. "You're willing to believe that I am hundreds of years old, that I can do magic, and that I worship ancient gods, but you draw the line when I start naming names?"

One of the Yanomami men spoke sharply, and while she didn't know the words Helen couldn't mistake the tone. "You shall have to do much to convince me," she called over her shoulder as she followed her guides into the trees.

"I shall enjoy the challenge!" Emrys called, and waved at her once, just before he fell out of her sight.


End file.
